Magnetic Recording and the Telephone

In 1900, Valdemar Poulsen patented the Telegraphone, a device to record sound on a steel wire or tape. He later designs a model to answer the telephone automatically and record a message.

Magnetic recording would eventually prove to be the technology of choice for answering machines, but it would be years before the proponents of the phonograph would give up on the idea of a phonograph-based telephone recorder.